


Broken Cage

by Alicuiiroshi



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst, Gen, Human!Rize, I caN'T TAG FOR LIFE, I'm gonna tag, Kinda...?, NaturalOneEyed!Kaneki, Rize was actually a murderer before becoming a Ghoul, SO, because Rize didn't do anything like canon 'cuz she can duh, for good measure, ghoul!Kaneki, yeah...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 14:10:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alicuiiroshi/pseuds/Alicuiiroshi
Summary: When Rize sees the boy with the same book as her, she thinks he will be an easy kill.Being almost crushed by steal beams and waking up in a hospital with her now-dead date's organs transplanted into her wasn't in the plans.Not that she minded though.





	Broken Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Before you start, note that I am not a native English speaker, so if you see any mistake, sorry, and please if you would tell me I would be really grateful.
> 
> So, about the story. Yeah, this is an AU I wanted to try for a long time, but after seeing a fanart on pixiv (https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=manga_big&page=37&illust_id=46643349), I decided to give it a shot.  
> I'm pretty scared to post this, let's hope it's ok...? Thank you! :)

One day, when she just moved to the 20th ward and was still new to everything there, she bumped on a boy that seemed a bit younger than her, with grey eyes and black, straight hair.  
The boy saw her, smiled a little, and hurried away.

**Did he smell it right? Was that _blood_  on her, on that such innocent-looking girl? That girl that reminded him so much about his mother? Was that blood? Maybe she was just on her period. Yes, that had to be it. He hadn't a really good sense of smell to begin with. Yes, that human girl wasn't guilty of anything, he was just being paranoid.**

She started to go to a cute cafè called 'Anteiku' some days later. Cafès were good places to find victims. ( _Also, coffee was her favorite drink and the cake there was delicious, though she didn't eat too much of that because it was bad for her waistline and she needed to be perfect for her… hobby_ )

A Wednesday, when she opened the door of the bar to enter, a boy sitting in a table near the window caught her attention: he seemed familiar… Wasn't he the same boy she bumped on a month ago? How could she forget such a cute face! She bet it could be even cuter… sliced up, with blood all over it.  
She suppressed a giggle.  
She sat in her usual place.

When that black-haired boy was reading the same book as her ( _The Black Goat's Egg by Sen Takatsuki… she couldn't deny the boy had nice… and dark… tastes_ ) , she saw her opportunity. She made the book fall on purpose and acted like a really shy and intellectual girl. Every man without brain always fell for it. The boy was even more shy, if it was possible. She somehow convinced him to meet her again, despite his reluctance. ( _Reluctance? How strange._ )

**This girl, this girl smelled human, no doubt.**  
**But, this girl, this girl also smelled a lot like blood ( _not her own_ ), death ( _a lot, more than him_ ) and bad intentions ( _he was scared. Not too much though. No sir_ ). Very,  _very_  bad intentions.**  
**And her little smile didn't convince him.**  
**He really hoped he was wrong.**

Next thing they knew, they were on a date in a bookstore and they were eating at a little restaurant. Well, she was eating, the boy just took a few bites out of his sandwiches and went to the bathroom.  
Interesting, indeed.

She couldn't deny the boy was a good date… well, if you liked to talk about books, that is. She  _did_  like to talk about books, about how much Takatsuki seems twisted but at the same time poetic. About the gory parts in the books  _(her favorite ones_ ), about the real meaning behind every word, every kanji.  
At least the date wasn't boring in that way, not too much anyway.  
The boy seemed really nervous though. Like,  _too_  nervous, even for a first date with a beautiful girl that was definitely out of his league. He was probably just shy. She brushed the thought off.

When it was time to return home, she pretended to be scared of the ghouls, that were a known danger in Japan ( _the fact that the 20th ward was the safest didn't matter at the moment_ ) and of the serial killer that the News talked so much about. Nevermind that  _she_  was that killer. The boy didn't know, yet. ( _When she mentioned ghouls, a guilty expression flashed in the boy's eyes for a moment, before being replaced with one of concern. Rize didn't notice, she was still staring at the ground with teary eyes for her 'damsels in distress' act_ ).

They talked during the way, and she was guiding him to an alley ( _he didn't know it was an alley_ ). Apparently, the boy was 19 years old like her, and he was an University student.  
He seemed younger. She seemed older.

When they arrived at the contruction site, she took out her knife ( _she always had it with her, never say never_ ) and stabbed her victim with a crazed smile and a strange glint in her eyes. Or, at least, she  _thought_  the knife stabbed him. It  _should_  have stabbed her victim.  
She looked up to his face, with her smile frozen in place, and was surprised to find not a single hint that he was in pain, but a very surprised expression in its place. Not terrorized, not pained. Just surprised. Just plain, innocent, honest, surprise.  
She looked down, where she expected to see that red and warm liquid all over her hand, staining her sleeve.  
She saw nothing.

The knife didn't stab her victim. The knife bent and broke.  
Not a single drop of blood was visible.

Rize knew what that meant. She paled.  
Why, of all people, had she to target a  _ghoul_?  
She tried to hit him in the eye, but he dodged, so she started to run away from him. How amusing, the hunter becoming the victim.

In that moment, something fell.  
Next thing she knew, she was pushed out of the way by… something red ( _she saw a blurred flash of it_ ), and steal beams crushed the black-haired ghoul, that emitted a pained, hight-pitched cry of agony.

She could hear someone approaching them, screaming to  _call an ambulance_  and  _is that a person under the beams??_.

She blacked out after that.

**The doctors had to make a difficult decision. None of the patients had any relative, and they couldn't perform a transplant without their approval. Of course, the black-haired kid was already almost fully healed, and he also had a number to call in case of emergencies like these. Dr. Kanou didn't call _Hideyoshi Nagachika_  and pretended  _Ken Kaneki_  was a lonely, lonely boy. He told the News he was dead.  
In his home, a blonde boy cried in silence on his pillow, cursing himself for not having stopped his childhood best friend from going to that date. Kaneki didn't even like that girl, it could have been easy.**

**The good doctor put the ghoul in a tank with tubes and liquid and opened the area of skin where his kakuho resided, and cut it out ten, a hundred, a thousand times. It regrow every time, it hurt everytime. The poor boy's hair started to became white.**

When Rize woke up, she was in a hospital after receiving an organ transplant from the black-haired boy. Seems like the thing that pushed her out of the way, saving her, injured her to the point her organs were damaged on the impact. How ironic, really. Saved and killed ( _almost_ ) by the same thing at the same time.  
Her date, her victim, was however dead.  _Kaneki Ken_ , was his name.

**He wasn't, but only Akihiro Kanou knew that.**  
**And maybe, a little girl with bandages too.**

The doctors didn't find any of her parents, so when the black-haired nurse asked her about them, she told her they were dead. She told her she was an orphan, raised in the streets. The truth was, she didn't know anything about them, just that one of them ( _father_ ) was a ghoul, and a very important one at that ( _"-a Washuu! Isn't that great, Rize? I'm a Washuu too!" "It is, Furuta!"_ ) while the other one ( _mother_ ) was human. Rize herself wasn't fully human, but she wasn't a ghoul either. They called her kind  _half-humans_. Not that people knew they existed anyway, they were just easily disposable kids in a Garden, defective one-eyed, humans with a few more of Red Child Cells than normal and a little stronger than normal humans. She escaped though, and a serious ghoul with long moustaches found and took care of her. His name was Matasaka Kamishiro ( _dad_ ). She wondered if he escaped Cochlea yet.

When she left the hospital and made her way towards Anteiku, she saw the bar closed.  
Inside, she could see them through the little window on the door, the employees were arguing and crying. Even the usually calm manager seemed sad.  
She wondered what happened.  
She didn't see the blonde boy ( _wasn't he always with the shy ghoul in the cafè?_ ) at a table with a cup of back coffe, crying for his friend, away from the others after giving them the news.

**He hated black coffee, far too bitter. Kaneki loved it. Maybe it was because he wasn't exactly a human, so he couldn't drink anything else other than water. But that was supposed to be a secret. He's sorry, Kaneki, for knowing your secrets without telling you. He's so, so sorry.**

When, later, Rize found out she somehow became a ghoul, she was amused. Oh, how easy it would be now to kill her victims.

That was how she discovered how sweet human flesh was, and she started to kill with another goal in mind other than for the fun of it: eating.

Slowly, the News stopped talking about the dangerous serial killer and started talking about the S-rated ghoul Binge Eater.

The day the Aogiri members came in Anteiku to find  _Ken Kaneki or the one that smells like him_ , Rize was there, reading and drinking a cup of black coffee.

She ignored them after giving them a side-way glance. They didn't ignore her however.  
So she revealed her kagune ( _Ken Kaneki's kagune_ ) in front of all the customers ( _the ones Aogiri didn't already kill_ ) and she fought against them. She won. Maybe it was also because that Anteiku waitress, the one suspiciously similar to the youngest Aogiri member in the room, helped to protect the bar. Or maybe because only two of the three members fought. The waitress was knocked unconscious by them at the end, and almost every customer was killed. So much for protecting the bar.

The taller member, with the white suit and blonde hair, was impressed by Rize's show of strength since she was 'new'.  
Oh, so he knew about her.

They brought her to their headquarter, they said they could make her meet the doctor that performed the organ transplant, Akihiro Kanou.  
She accepted. She wanted to thanks the man that gifted her the naive ghoul's power. She wanted to thanks the man that made her the  _Binge Eater_ , a title she was very proud of.

She met the doctor ( _she already knew him, of course, but she only knew a part of the facade he used to put on in the hospital_ ).

She also saw that Kaneki Ken kid again. He probably didn't see her, in that strange tank he was in, with tubes connected with his constantly regenerating kakuho.  
His formally black hair was now the purest white she had ever seen, and his grey eyes were dull and empty. He seemed to be crying. He probably wasn't even really conscious.  
She almost pitied him.

_Almost_.

**He saw everything blurred and moving, or he just saw nothing. But, that smell of blood was familiar, and was that… his scent? His scent was on the person that was in front of him. They had long purple hair. They were familiar, but he didn't know who they were. He couldn't remember, and his head hurt so much, he couldn't even _try_  to remember.  
Whatever, they were cupping his face with one of their hands and their long nails broke the skin on his face. Something warm was staining his cheeks. Was that tears? Was that blood? Was there even a difference between the two? They came at the same time after all. With tears, blood came, with blood, tears came. It didn't even hurt that much anymore, so as the person held his face even harder, he kept an impassive expression.**

Doctor Kanou told her about his goal.  _The world was a cage_ , but she already broke it.  
He also told her about Anteiku's manager being the cause Aogiri exists.  
She doesn't care, but she lets him talk.  
She met the black and white twins. They were like her, but weaker, the mad doctor told her.  
( _They weren't like her at all._ )

Some time later ( _weeks, months_ ), the Commission of Counter Ghoul raided Kanou's sick laboratory. She wasn't there, obviously, but Kaneki was still in that tank.  
Rize wondered if he was alive, or if the CCG got rid of him. Maybe he was stuck at Cochlea, or in a beautiful and deadly briefcase.

One day, while she was at Anteiku to choose her next victim, the kind manager approached the purple-haired waitress.  
_"Kaneki is safe."_  he said. The waitress almost cried. Rise could have sword she saw a tear running down her left cheek, the one uncovered by the dark hair. She wondered if it was the same for the right one.  
Rize still didn't care about that bookworm too much, but she nodded to herself. She didn't know why she did.  
He heard the manager of the cafè saying the location where the now white-haired ghoul was kept safe. She made a mental note of the place. You can never know when the want to kill your old enemies will resurface. He didn't die on the first round, after all.  
She continued to read,  _The Hanged Man's MacGuffin_. She had to agree with Prisoner 182: humans really looked like candies.  
And the kids tasted like candies.  
She loved candies when she was human, now she loved kids more.

Some weeks later, she met the annoying Ken Kaneki again. She went where she heard the manager said he was, and opened the… place he was in.  
He was curled on himself sobbing and with his back against the wall. He was murmuring things to himself, but Rize made no efforts to try and understand what he was saying.

She went close to him, grabbed his white hair and pulled his head up, to see the face that sometimes haunted her in her sleep since the day she saw him at Kanou's laboratory.  
In her dreams it was expressionless, but crying blood tears, so many that they drowned her.

Now, in the real world, his face was distorted in a mix of sadness and fear. His eyes were wide open, his sekigan showing, and he was crying a mix of normal and blood tears.

Rize almost felt pity for him.  
( _But the she rembered why he had a sekigan since the day he was born and that was because he wasn't a failure like you, and you are just born wrong, wrong, wrong_ ) ( _She just wanted to hurt him again now_ )

The door behind her opened and she could sense the person that opened it froze. She turned her head towards them, and she saw a man with light hair (  _were they white or grey? She couldn't see with the lighting in the room_ ) and something in his hand. When he saw her, he motioned for her to get away from the half-crazed ghoul, and she did. This man seemed strong, and with the limited space she couldn't use her kagune much.

The man then throw the thing in his hand to the ghoul in the straitjacket, and the ghoul immediately started to eat whatever was inside ( _meat, now Rize could see it. She felt hungry, but again, she was always hungry. She wasn't the Binge Eater for no reason, after all._  )

The young one eyed-ghoul begged for more,  _more meat,_   _he was **sTARVING-!**_

But the other man went out of the room, and so did Rize, ignoring the cries of agony behind her.

The man, once he closed the door, turned to face her.  
"So, you're the one that's causing trouble now?"  
"Yeah, that's probably me."  
"Do you know the rules of the 20th ward?"  
"I may know them. Why do you ask? I'm not going to follow them anyway."

The man stayed silent for a while, then he changed the topic.  
Rize giggled.  
"Why I came here, you say?" she questioned, "Well, I just happened to know the place and I wanted to see an old… friend." More like a victim, but he didn't need to know what happened at the contruction site.  
The man stayed silent again, then he asked to not come there anymore.  
She kept her smile on her face, but didn't say anything until the man left.

Then, the Anteiku raid happened.  
She learned it, as many other ghouls, from the manager of Anteiku itself. It was a moment were no human ( _at least, not fully.. eheh_ ) customers were present.  
The old man made sure to have everyone attention and then spoke.

"Our real identity had been discovered. The doves now know that Anteiku is ran by ghouls, so I would please ask all of you to fly from the 20th ward until after the attack we will receive from them. Anteiku will most likely be beaten by them, and I don't want any of my customer in danger. Some of us employees will however try their best to keep it safe.  
Thank you for your attention. Enjoy your coffees."

The silence in the room broke when all the ghouls started to whisper to themselves.

Rize raised an eyebrow, and sipped her coffee.

During the day of the raid, she watched it from afar, from a rooftop of an high building.  
She watched as the Devil Ape and the Black Dogs squads were killed, on by one, and their leaders last.  
She watched as the Non-Killing Owl was beaten, and as the One-Eyed Owl made its presence known.  
She watched as Aogiri took down a few investigator, and as how they didn't killed them. Unusual for them. She watched as the said investigators were brought away from the fight by two Aogiri members and she watched the One-Eyed Owl swallowing the Non-Killing one and running away with a distorted laugh.

When the fight ended, she watched the retreating backs of the investigators, as they mourned their losts.

Then, when the 20th ward became completely silent, and the blood-stained snow was covered by fresh and white snow, she got up and went away.

She saw the building of Anteiku destroyed.  
( _she wondered if a new Anteiku would open, maybe in another ward. She would become an habitual customer immediatly_ )

She smiled, holding a book with the title of 'The Black Goat's Egg' on its cover in her hands.


End file.
